by Mary Robison
A Mustang zooms by on the avenue, horn blaring.
“We did nothing. Why are they honking at us?” she asks.
I say, “They think it’s a compliment. They’re men, we’re women.”
“Then they’d honk at dough,” she says.
She buries her hands in the patch pockets of her robe, walks in a circle and comes back to me. She says, “I’ll tell you what I hate. Something I’ve come to loathe. Boating metaphors.”
“Really? Huh. I guess they’ve never bothered me.”
She rises slightly on her bare toes and holds herself there. “That you’re on an even keel or you’re smooth sailing.”
“Look what the tide washed in? Maybe that’s for a cat,” I say.
“You’re not a little at sea,” she says. “Nobody’s a pirate. This isn’t safe harbor. There’s no ship coming in.”
283
I shouldn’t be, at this late hour, but I’m up in my room, walking all around, and I’ve got my hammer but not a goddamn thing to nail.
And I wasted too much time and spent too much time painting in here and painting everything. Yellow and red? It looks like a Midas Mufflers.
284
I decide to phone Dix up and maybe talk to him.
“Honey, you know what’s good about me is I all-ways tell it straight up,” he says. “I shoot from the hip.”
“You don’t mean shoot from the hip,” I say.
“I sure as shit do. When have I ever lied?”
I say, “By lied you mean, like if you say you’re part Mohican. Or you tell somebody you’ll give her everything she needs. Or if you say to a woman, ‘Wear a miniskirt,’ before she picks you up and then later say you meant nothing by it. Or like the umpteen times you went before a judge and pled innocent to drunk-driving charges even though they had a videotape of you, on your knees, in a circus act, were you, in my opinion, lying? Well, Dix, I guess it depends.”
I clear the moisture off my forehead. My, I have a lot of anger.
It’s all right, though. Dix doesn’t even hear the needle skipping.
Same Old Excuse
I don’t unroll the Sunday morning paper but fling it, still bound with a rubber band, into the trash basket. I don’t really need to know who won the cup. Anyway, here’s Mev, seated nicely in the bentwood rocker, seeking my counsel.
“When you’re at Grandpa’s . . . ,” she says.
“Hmm,” I say.
“O.K. Mother? May I get this off my tongue, please? There in the hallway when you’re going in, right? There’s like a gangly hallway table. And he keeps on it these tons of clippings and his memorabilia. So the first thing, he spies me reading some of it. Big fucko deal. That’s an invasion, how he sees it. Fucking red alarm, un-totally-believable. Then! Next! Just a couple days later he’s complaining that I don’t care and don’t take any interest in him. Until we’re in this shrieking fight and I’m resorted to tears.”
She rocks methodically in the rocker.
I sigh. My cheek on the ball of my shoulder. I’m staring at the trash basket and wishing I hadn’t chucked the newspaper. I could be reading it and perhaps finding answers in there.
“We all have fathers,” I say.
“Yours has a temper,” says Mev.
“We all have fathers with tempers.”
I add, “Some of them, at various other times, are generous and patient and more-or-less forgivable.”
Mev’s head turns to me. “So you forgive them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The reason all people give. That’s how I am.”
“Appreciate your candor,” says she.
I say, “All part of being a mom.”
286
And never mind my father, who did call Paulie “that little goddamned fruit.”
Paint It Black
Hollis has paused in eating his chef’s salad to read from a literary journal he has lying open beside his bowl.
He strolled over here on his lunch hour just to sup with me. “Listen to this tommyrot. This individual contends—whoops,” he says, snapping a fleck of tomato off his page. “Didn’t mean to be messy. Person contends that everything in the book, is the book. The copyright notice. The dedication and acknowledgments . . .
“You should read this,” he says and throws the review over his shoulder. “Total bull and horseshit.”
“I will if you go and get it,” I say. “Doesn’t sound like it’s worth my rising up and walking over there.”
Still a Ways to Go
Hollis invited me along for this Driver’s Ed. session with one of his students—a relaxed-seeming Asian boy named Rudy who wears bulky black shoes and a rope-knit sweater, and who stuck on horn-rimmed glasses to do the drive.
We haven’t been touring for long, but Hollis ticks a fingernail on the windshield and directs Rudy to steer us through the intersection and take us for doughnuts at Krispy Kreme.
I do want doughnuts. Or cinnamon rolls.
Rudy goes in with five bucks from me and another five from Hollis.
“You really can’t complain,” I say, while we’re sitting here waiting.
I can see Rudy inside the shop and on the other side of the counter is a purple-faced manager, snarling commands, and a cashier with a gray French braid and a face that is hopeless-looking.
“I mean, Hollis, as far as jobs go?”
“Shouldn’t throw stones,” he says.
“Beg pardon?”
“I said, ‘Shouldn’t throw stones.’”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I say, “I just don’t get the rest of it.”
“That is the rest of it, cousin. It means, any people who’ve been paid for working on movies with talking squash should hide their fucking heads in shame and not throw stones.”
289
“Who does this?” I ask, smearing a lipsticked obscenity off the bathroom mirror.
Women Who Can’t Listen
Now I’ve been here at the sinks for a bit, running the tap and waiting for the water to get cold. “It isn’t going to,” I say. “Accept that.”
Another minute goes by and I say, “All right, enough of this. What’s wrong with you? Stop. Go do something or take things to the cleaners.”
“Well, I would,” I say, “but I’m busy doing this right now. Doing this, in which I’m greatly involved.”
On and On and On
The song in my head switches to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I mention this to the Deaf Lady.
“Sing it,” she says.
“I can’t,” I say. “I don’t know the words.”
“Oh, you do so,” she says and sings, “‘Mine eyes have seen the glory, dunt dah-dunt duh-dunt, duh Lord. Dunt dah-dunt duh-dunt, the many, where dah-dunt duh-dunt, the sword.’”
So I think I might try telling my shrink the next time I’m stuck with a song but then, That! Is! It!
Life in the Car
Too much speed makes you wince and feel terrible. It’s late, I’m lost, low on gas; I’m looking for somebody to blame. I’ve gotta say this drooling Tropicana truck looks worthy. “Get away from me!” I yell at the truck. “No? Stay, then! We’ll both stay. Going faster’s the answer? I can do that too.” And just let the guy find out for his-own-self that his horrible juice cans are spilling all over the road.
293
Huh. Being driven somewhere, and in the passenger seat of that Ford Covington Victoria is a fully made-up clown.
294
Why am I paused here and in a nervous sweat over these “8-hour parking” signs? I don’t need to stop here for two seconds.
This Must Be America
Dusk, and I’m watching from the window at Dix’s place. The night out there is pink and black around a streetcar d
river snatching a smoke. He pokes his hands into his pockets, rocks on his shoes. Now his knees bend and he lowers himself to roost on the street curb but no, he bobs back up—remembering, perhaps, his employment.
Don’t Want to Know
Paulie had a pill case equipped with a beeper that reminded him to take his meds.
Armando, his friend, said to me, “You know why they return-ned him to the hose petal the second time. Headache, from the antiviral drugs. So he was banging hees head.”
297
The cops with Paulie change shift every ninety minutes now.
He says he feels like he knows some of them, others he doesn’t. He says the weird, disconcerting thing is they’re always right there. They’ll put a chair over near the door and one of them will sit or more like alight, Paulie tells me, or another one will lean against the wall for almost the whole shift, maybe break away and pace, but go back to leaning. They are all, he says, beat; just beat, every one of them.
He says when they talk it’s as if he’s a Martian.
He says they’re young, most of them, they look like teaching assistants.
He says they’re not watching, they’re standing watch.
298
“Honey,” Dix says now. “You know that thing that was all over the news? That ‘Flap over the Flag,’ they were calling it?”
I have looked up and am looking at him with both eyes. While from outside comes the clanging mournful bell of an ice cream truck.
“That,” he says, “was about the Confederate flag. And about how much it matters to our heritage.”
I want to go slowly here. I ask, “What all do you think you have covered under this big word ‘heritage’?”
He says, nodding with each word, “It means we did all-ways have the Confederate flag.”
I knew he’d say that, or something like that.
Oh, but, man, he is dumb.
I’m staring at the baseboards and at the plug in this electrical socket and at the casters on the feet of this end table.
In another moment I have to decide—talk to him, or leave without another word and speed all the way home.
299
Now, in my kitchen, I’m scouring the stove’s burner motherfucking pans.
While floating in to me from the TV I left running out on the sun porch is the low, distant, measured and mechanical sound of an aerobics instructor: “Abs in. The tailbone tucked. Now breathe with the stretch. And, extend the stretch.”
300
There’s revision work on the script that I have to do.
I’ve got the last version up on my computer. Juking around and writing Dix into the plot as a demon character.
“He’s an enemy of the people!” Bigfoot proclaims, and then I have the two of them face off, eager to fight. “Fool of New Orleans,” says Bigfoot, “prepare!”
Broken When I Bought It
I’m sideways on the bed, not feeling so great, and thinking about my many errors.
Where Dix lives they have to start overimbibing and pimping and joining the dirty police force at such a young age. It’s not like they have the big illustrated talking encyclopedias in the classrooms, or that anybody very interesting ever drops by to lecture.
302
This morning he’s out on the front porch, twisting and turning the doorknob.
He’s brought, he shows me in the palm of his hand, little novelty dice that spell out, “i sorry.”
Those I get to keep.
Chapter Ten
Kick Out the Jams
I think part of the drag of being lost is that it’s called that.
But I am endeavoring to find my way, aren’t I? Perhaps I overlooked the exit for Violet or perhaps Violet wasn’t the exit to take. I’ll just journey on.
304
Now, with this couple here in the gold Ford Taurus I sense strain. Her chin’s tipped up and she’s looking to see if he’s mad and if maybe she should say something, and he’s shaking his head, no, there’s nothing wrong, although his face is a sour mask of regret.
I pray, “God, hear my plea. May I please never have anything to do with anything like that ever and never participate in that type of thing again.”
305
Penny’s down here already, fooling around and fishing out of Point Gilbert. Where I’ve been before with someone. It’s swamps. Kept at a hundred and twelve degrees and it has prehistoric birds.
306
He and I are supposed to meet up and do a lot of work and then fly on out and present it to Belinda.
Because wherever we are, we’re on the payroll.
Still Think They’re Cheating Me
This spooky stuff along here means I’m going the right way—smoking crawfish shacks, rubble yards, a dead tire place or two. There are stalls and stands selling all the bait and voodoo fish hooks you could ever want to own.
However, these people here get the sunshine.
308
Weirdly, my hotel room in Cerulean is nice. Vases of flowers. A white piqué coverlet on the bed. Shiny dark wood floors. Lace at the old windows. Ah, but there’s always one-more-thing, now isn’t there. Left below the bed for me—a baby’s Stride Rite shoe.
I’m wondering about it, as I’m in bed and preparing for sleep, telling myself it’s fine that a terrific baby stayed here before me and there is no reason to believe the stay ended in tragedy just because the baby left behind its shoe. There. On to the next thing. I’m wondering, when do you ever see the truly attractive Christian men? I want to ride to church in a black van full of French-ski-champ-looking Christians. That, to me, would be the way to go.
I’ll Keep Quiet
When I was staying with him, Paulie went out and leaned on the counter in his kitchen and read the ingredients on a dozen different teas he had, with his white-gloved hands picking up and turning each box one after the other. I said, “You’ve been looking at those for almost an hour,” and he said, “Well, right, but I want to know what’s in them,” and he didn’t give it up and he tipped yet another box into the light, saying, “So I can find out if this has like . . . lemon grass.”
As though he’d been able to turn the sound down for a time.
310
I’m trying to hold on to the situation with him, but I’ve got a scrap of something in one hand and a scrap of something else in the other.
The Entertainment Industry
“So, do you fish?” Penny asks me, calling from his room.
“Sure, I do,” I say. “What could be to it? You have a pole, sit by the water, the fish come along.”
“Actually, it’s a little more organized than that,” says Penny. “We have a guide.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Two guides, in fact. They’re Cajun, but you can understand most of what they tell you. We’re leaving out of Port Hero at five in the a.m. so out of here at four.”
“I’ll still be up,” I say.
He says, “Remember to wear stuff that covers you pretty much head to toe. You don’t wanna get eaten, or sunstroke.”
“Well, never mind, then,” I say.
“Aw . . . you sure?”
“I am,” I say, “so sure.”
Momar with His Kids on Fire
Belinda joins us suddenly. And, as I don’t like thinking about Belinda, the question of why she has appeared, in my mind, never comes up.
“What a pleashunt shuprize,” says Penny.
“Wait,” I say to Belinda. “You mean we don’t get this time off?”
We definitely do not and I am aware of that. I need to know if Belinda will strike me.
313
Now she’s saying some words I’m not hearing but the way she’s speaking is like she’s ripping a paid bill in half.
Although, I’ve been
perched here at her side being so nice and nodding along, pretending she wasn’t repeating everything for the fourth time.
She has my latest rewrite of the Bigfoot script—with the evil demon character—resting on her thigh.
She waves a hand over it like it’s a smoking trash fire and says to me, “I don’t want to do this now. I want to see some of New Orleans.”
“O.K.,” I say, “great. Me too.”
“Who could take us?” she asks.
“Penny.”
“Penny’s out in the swamps.”
“No one, then. We take ourselves.”
Belinda gives me a look that is utterly disgusted.
She asks, “Where’s your husband? Didn’t you have a husband?”
“Left me for a dumber woman,” I say, which is true, true; he did, true.
“Hmm,” says Belinda. “Maybe smart or dumb wasn’t it.”
“A bigot and a Republican. Selfish, whiny, and mean.”
“Breasts?” she asks.
I say, “None whatsoever.”
I say, “Still, it’s a mystery. What a girl like that could see in him.”
314
Belinda went to bed early, so I’ve wandered out and found a nice, normal bar. Oak booths. Sports photographs. Ceiling fans.
There’s an eruption from outside the place and a couple of sopping drunk men crash through the front entry and onto the tiled floor. They’re socking each other on the shoulders and neck, grasping each other’s shirts, throwing themselves off, scrambling back together.
I’ve been, since their arrival, a cactus.
“Get out of here,” someone yells and someone else yells, “Yeah. Go.”
I don’t mind these fighting men, is the truth. They’re not going to bother me tonight. They won’t denigrate my efforts, or ridicule anything that’s mine, won’t roll their eyes, or correct me, or cut me short and leave the room. They won’t burden, or overwork me, or heap upon me responsibilities that are theirs. And, no more than they are doing, they won’t intrude on my privacy, try to embarrass me or make me uncomfortable.
Plus, they seem pretty far beyond hurting each other.
You Can Fly but Your Body Can’t
My first seat was in first class between Penny and Belinda. Before I poured Rémy Martin down my throat and had to come see what the folks in the back here think of things.
